Data Privacy & Security

Document version 2.0 — Last updated September 21, 2026

1. Overview

Smart Assistant is a Zoho CRM sidebar extension that provides unified visibility across a contact’s CRM profile, Zoho Books financial records, Zoho Desk support tickets, and an optional AI-generated strategic summary. It runs entirely inside Zoho CRM, either as a Related List widget on the contact page or as a view-page button that opens in an in-CRM popup.

This document describes how data is handled throughout the extension’s operation, including the limited cases in which data leaves your Zoho organization.

2. Authorization & Access

Smart Assistant does not ask users for Zoho credentials and does not run its own login, password, or token-collection flow. Access is granted through a Zoho CRM Connection that your organization’s administrator creates and authorizes inside Zoho CRM (Setup → Developer Hub → Connections).

2.1 How It Works

1. Your Zoho administrator installs Smart Assistant and creates the Connection in your CRM organization.
2. The administrator is shown Zoho’s official consent screen and approves the read-only scopes listed below.
3. Zoho stores and manages the resulting authorization within Zoho. Smart Assistant never receives the tokens.
4. When a user opens a contact, the widget calls Zoho through that Connection and renders whatever data the user is already permitted to see in Zoho.

Because authorization lives inside Zoho, it is admin-controlled: administrators can review, re-scope, or revoke it at any time from the Connections screen, and access follows each user’s existing Zoho permissions.

2.2 Scope of Access

All requested scopes are read-only. Smart Assistant never creates, updates, or deletes CRM, Books, or Desk records.

3. Data Flow Architecture

Business data lives in Zoho and is read from Zoho. The only data that reaches Smart Assistant’s infrastructure is the context needed to produce an optional AI summary.

┌────────────────────────── Zoho CRM (in-CRM widget) ──────────────────────────┐
│                                                                             │
│   Smart Assistant widget / button ── Zoho Connection (read-only) ──► Zoho    │
│   (Related List + view-page popup)                                   APIs    │
│                    │                                          (CRM/Books/   │
│                    │ HTTPS                                     Desk)         │
└────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                     │
                     │  viewing context only (for the AI summary)
                     ▼
          ┌────────────────────────┐   HTTPS   ┌────────────────────────┐
          │  Smart Assistant       │──────────►│  AI model provider     │
          │  backend (AI summary)  │           │  (Gemini by default)   │
          └────────────────────────┘           └────────────────────────┘

3.1 Step-by-Step Data Flow

1. User opens a contact in Zoho CRM → the Smart Assistant widget or button loads in the CRM UI.
2. The widget reads data through the Connection — CRM contact and account details, Books invoices/payments, and Desk tickets — directly via Zoho’s APIs.
3. Data is rendered in the browser inside Zoho. Smart Assistant’s servers are not involved in reading this data.
4. Optional AI summary: to generate the strategic summary, the widget sends the contact context it is currently displaying to our backend, which forwards it to the configured AI provider and returns the summary text.
5. Nothing is persisted beyond a short-lived in-memory cache (see §5).

3.2 What Is NOT Stored

• ✗ No Zoho credentials, access tokens, or refresh tokens are received or stored in the Connection-based flow
• ✗ CRM contact data is never written to disk on our servers
• ✗ Financial records are never stored after the response is sent
• ✗ Support tickets are never persisted
• ✗ No data is sold or shared with advertising networks, analytics providers, or data brokers

4. Data Sent to Our Backend

Our backend serves the extension’s pages and provides one functional endpoint: the AI summary.

4.1 AI Summary Endpoint

4.2 In-Memory Cache

Smart Assistant uses an in-memory TTL cache (MemoryCache) so an unchanged summary is not regenerated on every page load:

• What is cached: AI-generated summary text only (not raw CRM/Books/Desk data)
• Cache duration: 15 minutes by default
• Scope: process memory only — never written to disk
• Eviction: entries expire automatically; the cache is cleared on server restart

5. Storage & Retention

In the Connection-based flow there is no token store, so there is no stored credential data to retain or delete. Customers who previously used the legacy standalone linking mode (superseded by the Connection and not used by Marketplace installations) can have their encrypted token entry removed by disconnecting or by contacting support.

6. Third-Party Services

Smart Assistant relies on a small number of service categories:

6.1 AI Model Provider

The AI summary is generated through a third-party AI model API. The default provider is Google Gemini; the provider is configurable by the operator (other OpenAI-compatible providers can be selected). The provider receives only the contact context described in §4.1 and returns generated text. Data sent to the provider is not used by us for any purpose other than producing the summary.

If no AI provider is configured, the AI summary feature is disabled and no data leaves our backend.

6.2 Zoho

Smart Assistant communicates with the Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and Zoho Desk APIs provided to your organization, and with Zoho’s authorization service for the Connection. Your data remains in your Zoho organization and its data center; Smart Assistant does not copy it elsewhere.

6.3 No Other Third Parties

Smart Assistant does not use advertising networks, tracking pixels, third-party analytics SDKs, or data brokers.

7. Data Processing & GDPR Compliance

7.1 Lawful Basis

Smart Assistant processes Zoho data on behalf of the organization’s administrators and users, under the legitimate interest of providing business intelligence within the existing CRM workflow. The extension:

• Processes data only when explicitly triggered by the user viewing a contact
• Processes only the minimum data needed for the AI summary requested
• Retains nothing beyond the current session and the 15-minute in-memory cache

Where Smart Assistant processes personal data at the direction of a customer organization, the customer acts as data controller and Smart Assistant as processor.

7.2 User Rights

7.3 To Remove All Data

1. Uninstall Smart Assistant or delete its Connection in Zoho CRM (Setup → Developer Hub → Connections) — this revokes the organization’s authorization.
2. Any cached summary expires automatically within 15 minutes (or immediately on server restart).
3. Aggregate usage counters and operation logs age out per §9.

8. Security Measures

9. Logs & Usage Counters

9.1 Operation Logs

Our servers keep standard operation logs for reliability and security monitoring:

• Logged: request method, URL path, HTTP status, duration, IP address, user-agent, and a random request ID
• Not logged: request/response bodies, the contact context, financial amounts, support ticket content, or any credentials
• Rotation & retention: files rotate at ~5 MB; retention is configurable, and older archive files are pruned automatically

Logs may contain an IP address and user-agent as part of a standard access record — no other personal data is recorded.

9.2 Anonymous Usage Counters

To understand load and cost, we keep aggregate daily counters: the number of AI summary requests and provider calls, the provider name, token counts, latency, and failure counts. These counters contain no customer content and no identifiers — they are totals, not per-user records.

10. Your Rights & Contact

To exercise a data right, ask a privacy question, or request deletion of any of the limited data described above:

• Extension: Smart Assistant for Zoho CRM
• Publisher: Integmia LLC
• Website: www.integmia.org
• Email: contact@integmia.org

We aim to respond to data requests promptly and will confirm what (if anything) we hold and what action we have taken.